What if an Individual tries to Make a Spare using 3D Printing?

News from the 3D printing industry | 8 February 2017

Rob Berthold is an individual, a mechanical engineer who used 3D printing to replace the broken plastic top cap on his refrigerator door handle, for which he couldn’t find any spare part. He had no experience in 3D printing, so he took this as a challenge. Being familiar with CAD (Computer Aided Design), it was not as difficult for him that it would have been for a layman in these things. He used a free Web-based 3D design tool for beginners to shape the part. After failing once, he managed to make a perfectly functional refrigerator door handle top cap, although aesthetical aspect is quite different. Rob Berthold says to have spent several evenings on this part, but it was the only solution to replace this obsolete part which was not available anymore.

This experience demonstrates that 3D printing is a realistic solution for obsolete parts. Rob Berthold is not a 3D printing expert, his process was not optimized and it took weeks, but he could make it at reasonable cost. At Spare Parts 3D, we developed a solution which perfectly suits customers’ expectations. We provide them with any spare, anywhere, anytime, at lower cost, offering an end-to-end solution to satisfy anyone with a broken plastic top cap on his refrigerator door handle.